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National Science Week – Bird Brain @ Girrawheen Library
August 16, 2023 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
As part of National Science Week we are focusing on educational and interactive talks about the latest research projects that cover bird cognition and behaviour and the impact of environmental changes in their habitat.
The study of animal cognition is a growing area in the scientific community. Defined as the way animals perceive, take in, store, and act on information from their environment, cognition is vital for animals to be able to make decisions, respond to changes, and plastically alter their behaviour. In our lab, we focus on the study of cognition and communication in birds, using two main study species; the Western Australian magpie, and the Southern Pied Babbler.
Camilla Soravia – In my PhD, I investigate the relationship between heat stress and cognition in pied babblers, an arid zone South African bird. It is well known that heat stress impairs cognitive performance in humans. Given the growing evidence of a direct link between cognition and fitness, it is crucial to determine whether heat stress affects cognition also in wild animals, if we are to understand how they may flexibly adjust in the face of global warming. I present individuals with a battery of four cognitive tasks testing domain-general cognitive traits: associative and reversal learning, inhibitory control and spatial memory. To assess the effect of heat stress on cognitive performance, I test individuals under both normal conditions and heat stress conditions, identified by the display of heat dissipation behaviours. I then use the exceptional 15-year-long individual life-history record to explore the link between individual cognitive performance and fitness correlates, such as age at acquisition of dominance and number of offspring raised to independence per year.
Grace Blackburn – I work with wild Western Australian magpies to try and contextualise the importance of cognition by understanding if and how it can help individuals to respond to man-made changes. Specifically, I investigate how man-made noise, a growing global pollutant, affects the behaviour of magpies, and see if birds with better cognitive abilities are better able to cope with and respond to this anthropogenic stressor. For this work, I use a combination of field techniques, including observational focals, audio analysis, playback experiments, and cognitive testing.
Sarah Walsh – The ability for humans to create seemingly infinite meaning from a finite set of sounds has likely been a critical component in our success as a species, allowing the unbounded communication of information. Syntax, the combining of meaningful sounds into phrases, is one of the primary features of language that enables this extensive expressivity. Evidence for syntax has not before been demonstrated in the natural communication of a non‐human species, however we have found evidence for this capacity in Western Australian magpies, as we show they can structurally combine generic alarm calls with acoustically distinct alert calls to produce an alarm alert sequence.
The cognition and communication of avian species is advance far beyond our comprehension. These birds that we study are capable of amazing feats that we are only just beginning to understand!
“This National Science Week project is supported by the Australian Government”.
Target audience : Suitable for All Ages.
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